Dear HLP,
Lately I haven't been too active on the board, and even when I am; I usually restrain my temper and try to argue my point in a civilized and thought provoking manner.
There are times when ones has to take a sterner stance, but letting your temper have the better of you would ruin all whatsoever wisdom thy post may contain, so you should forever be polite and cosiderate.
This, however isn't such a time:
You're all a bunch of pussies.
I've watched Eva when I was 13, way back, when the internet was full of the criketry of modems sweating with massive kilobytes of data. I also watched Serial Experiments Lain (another title, acclimed to be more 'problematic' to understand) around that age, and managed to percieve a lot of insight into my life and the humans in general.
First of all: this series wasn't made to entertain and give you your daily dose of action/humor/escapist heroism
Second: this series has nothing to do with beating the bad guys, triump over percieved devious enemies or saving the f-...orsaken human race
Third: this series doesn't tell you what to think or that everything would be alright - so don't expect it to be spelled out for your convinience!
Fourth: the series, while flaunting heavy judeo-christian symbology, is actually heavily leaden with Jappanese culture; the characters are part of that culture, so unless you're willing to view them to an extent through that culture's customs and ideals much of their interaction and feelings will be totally lost to you
Fifth: at the heart of the series the main question is not one of "finding the right values" or "standing by your values"; but the lot more crucial question of to what extent do you allow society to dictate your values and your life
I could claim, that one has to ponder Eva to achieve and understanding - hell I did a lot of that -, but to be truthful during my first run, I simply allowed the show to wash over me.
Without either bogging down in the details of political cloack and dagger or interpersonal melodrama, I tried took in the bigger picture.
It's a tragedy of classical proportions.
A young boy who lived his life in practical exile - a non-life - is allowed to rebuild his life, bit-by-bit he reestabilishes his self through friendship, comarandine, duty and love....only to have it all taken from him, torning him to shreds in the process.
Through the various stages of his self discovery he also has to deal with issues of sexuality, responsibility and ultimately taking charge of his own life. These are things vital to any human.
Angels, battles, slapstick comedy, secret agents, beings of immense power - these are all just giant plot devices to hurtle the true story along that never emerges into the immediate events.
All said Evangelion is a seriously flawed piece of art: it encompasses so much, tries to work on so many layers, sacrifices so much in its quest that it inevitably fails to daliver on almost all conventional aspects of storytelling.
With such a shift of tone and theme, it can't fufill even the most rudimentary requirements of simetry, the basis of all works of art and and prose. It's impossible to wrap up, to give you the big all encompassing, cathartic resolution.
Therefore Evangelion can't be a morale tale. It can't portrey our ideals, our dreams, our even our subconscious nightmares.
All it can show is ourselves - in all our ****ed up glory.
Evangelion is oft quoted as revolutionary, fantastic or superb - what makes me boil with an unrestrained rage, is that it's quoted so for all the wrong reasons.
The true achievement of Evangelion is the abandonment of the classical story telling formula - even the poetic question that holds pretensious of understanding in itself - and being the perfect warped mirror - unassuming, nothing more and nothing less than confrontation with ourselves.
The rest is window dressing, byzantine worship of garnden gnomes; the rabid superstitious interpretation of the Bible by soccer moms whose sole religious experience consist of stupidvision and supersales at Walmart.
PS.: I read Eva-R right when it was written, hell I chatted on #eva-r on Dalnet.
It's fic of gargantuan proportions, and has its issues; but it's admitedly one of the better ones ever written.
My nominee for best fanfic though goes to this title:
Daniel Snyder - Symphony for the Devil
http://home.doramail.com/mew3point14/eva.htmlFor a list of classical/old Evangelion fanfiction follow this link:
http://www.angelfire.com/anime/evangelion2000/fanfiction.htmThese are still active evangelion fanfic archieves:
http://www.darkscribes.org/http://www.evafics.org/http://www.evamade.net/http://ayanami-chan.student.ugm.ac.id/stories.php
